Maersk acquires Vandegrift to grow customs brokerage

Maersk said its purchase will increase its North American customs staff from 80 to 250.

Maersk acquires Vandegrift to grow customs brokerage

Maersk said its purchase will increase its North American customs staff from 80 to 250.

Maersk acquires Vandegrift to grow customs brokerage

Maersk said its purchase will increase its North American customs staff from 80 to 250.

By Chris Dupin | Feb 12, 2019

Maersk said it acquired Vandegrift Inc. to expand its involvement in the customs house brokerage business in the U.S. and Canada and offer additional expertise to shippers. By acquiring Clark, N.J.-based Vandegrift, Maersk said it will increase its North American customs staff from 80 to 250 people and add 25 more licensed customs brokers. “Vandegrift’s expertise and reputation enables us to place a trusted adviser in front of our customers to design and build individualized customs brokerage and compliance programs that identify risk and provide solutions. This customer advocate role, coupled with our supply chain assets and global scale, creates winning end-to-end solutions for companies intent on competing better in 2019,” said Narin Phol, regional managing director of Maersk North America. Jeff Hammond, global head of customs brokerage for Maersk, said, “Now we can offer significantly more customs broker expertise, capacity and wider scope of solutions.”

Thomas Boyd, a spokesman for Maersk, said the deal will increase the scale of Maersk’s customs brokerage operation and provide it with additional expertise in areas such as duty drawback, trade compliance, foreign trade zones and customer consulting. He also said that Maersk was attracted to Vandegrift’s information platform, saying that 70 percent of Vandegrift’s activities with customers are digitized. Maersk has been emphasizing the benefits of automating processes now done manually in the shipping and logistics industry. Vandegrift’s website says it has a wholly owned, in-house-developed, real-time, data visibility on-demand report writer called VFI Track that also “houses several other modules including our global classification tool, purchase order management system and vendor compliance portal. The system was built to deliver our clients their data in a quick and concise manner without need for expensive customized programming or client IT involvement. Essentially, VFI Track becomes your in-house brokerage reporting software.” Vandegrift works with about 720 customers, but 35 of them account for about 60 percent of its business. Some of its high-profile customers include companies such as J. Crew, PVH Corp. (formerly known as Phillips-Van Heusen), Puma, Polo, Eddie Bauer, Pepsico and Advanced Auto Parts. Vandegrift’s website says its “platform spans all industry verticals including textiles, apparel, footwear, retail, electronics, chemicals, pharmaceutical, automotive, lumber and more.”

Price and terms of the deal were not disclosed. The transaction closed Friday.